The Painting
by pooooooooopshit
Summary: He loved her too much. He shouldn't be in love with her. He couldn't be. How was it happening? She wasn't alive. [Nalu] One-shot.


It wasn't possible.

Natsu Dragneel never thought this would be how it ended up happening. He wasn't much on love, but he did think about it sometimes. About who he would like to marry one day. As a kid he had a small crush on Lisanna but she moved away, and when she came back he wasn't interested anymore. He was 25, and still hadn't had a successful relationship. He was a painter, though, and that's when he realizes it.

He's fallen in love with his own creation.

She isn't living. She's not alive. She never has been, never will be. She's made of canvas and painted to look this way. Her glorious golden blonde hair and her large doe like eyes. Her body is perfection, like a goddess. Her lip gloss red as a rose in dawn's light. Her skin is flawless; it shines like morning dew. She wears a pink dress and pink high heels. She's almost of this time period, like someone from the Victorian ages.

All Natsu could so was stare in awe at her. He made that. Natsu Dragneel, aspiring artist created a masterpiece. But that wasn't want made him stop breathing. She was…so beautiful. It was crazy, the way his heart sped up. She isn't real. You shouldn't be falling in love with a painting.

 _But I'm not_ , he told himself, _I just feel this way because it turned out better than I expected. I'm amazing._ He sat down on the floor to inspect it. It was just so _grand_. Better than anything he could've ever hoped for. "What should I call you?" he asked himself. The radio turned to the next song.

 _Picture yourself in a boat on a river_

 _With tangerine and marmalade skies_

 _Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly_

 _A girl with kaleidoscope eyes_

Yes.

 _Cellophane flowers of yellow and green_

 _Towering over your head_

 _Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes_

 _And she's gone_

Lucy.

When he showed it to his friends, they were highly impressed. Of course they were. It was outstanding and their very own friend had made it that way. When they asked him if he was going to submit it he said no, but there were so many reasons under it.

The topping was how great it was. He wanted to keep it. It was natural, right? This glorious painting he made all by himself. The coating was he didn't want it to somehow be stolen or broken. And the inside was the part he would never admit; jealousy. He didn't want people to ogle her. He knew that was insane, so he made up excuses.

He started to just sit in that room sometimes and look at his painting. It went from a couple minutes of admiring to spending tea time in the room. The excuses kept bundling up, his mind becoming a maze. Soon enough the feeling of needing to make excuses vanished, and he just enjoyed looking at it.

It became more and more obsessive, Natsu skipping parties or events with his friends just so he could stay in the same proximity as Lucy. "If only you were real," Natsu would say to himself. Sometimes he wondered if he could make a statue of her, but he was horrible at it. His friends became worrisome when he kept skipping parties.

He lied to them daily. They had no idea that this painting was taking over his brain. Lucy was pulling him in. He even had dreams about her. If she was real. Sometimes nightmares, if he just sat there staring an inanimate object for years; slowly molding and dying. He decided in the end it would be worth it to just keep watching, hoping.

It even became stressful, yet he kept it up. Falling in love with his own creation; it was inhumane. Maybe if he could join her in the painting one day. That would be better than waiting around for nothing.

"Lucy in the sky with diamonds." Natsu versed one day. He gave out a deep sigh. "I would sell my soul just for you to be real, Lucy. I… I mean it. It's horrible of me, but I would."

Suddenly, the ground below him shook. He crashed against the wall, then jumped up and scrambled to catch Lucy if she fell. Soon the earth stopped shaking, but now there was a strange man in the corner of his house. "Get out! Who are you? You can't have her!" Natsu picked up a fire poker and prepared himself to attack, but the man just held up his hands.

"Oh, no, I will not harm you…not _directly_." The man chuckled, stepping into the light to reveal himself. He had orange hair and brown eyes, some stubble across his chin and upper lip. The man wore a long black cloak and all bandaged up. "My name is Gildarts, though some call me Satan."

"What?" Natsu choked. "I…didn't-" "Oh, stop right there. You _did_ mean it. I can tell these things." Gildarts interrupted, placing himself on Natsu's couch. "So you want this precious Lucy of yours to be real, eh?"

Natsu couldn't help but nod, though his stomach flipped when he realized he had. Gildarts smiled evilly. "I can arrange that. Full package. Exactly how you want her to be, the same structure and looks, a real human being."

"I can't trust you, though, you're the…d-devil…right? What's the catch?" Natsu asked.

"There is no catch, but there is a price."

"You don't mean…"

"Oh, _yes¸_ I do. Give me your soul."

"..but…" Natsu looked to Lucy, and hesitantly looked back at Gildarts. The sly smile, dirty clothes, his slippery way of talking. But… _Lucy_. The love of his life. The most beautiful thing alive. The woman keeping him _from_ living for the past month. Natsu knew the answer, but to come to terms with it was the sickening part.

"D…deal."

With a click of Gildarts's fingers, and a sudden shake of the hand from the black mist now surrounding them, the man had left. Natsu was all alone. Or was he? He turned around to face the painting.

…the painting. It was just as before, but Lucy was gone. Right below the painting, however, in all of her realness and glory stood Lucy. This time, in the flesh. The real curves on her body, the real golden blonde hair, the real doe-like eyes. The real everything. Natsu started crying, the emptiness inside him lifting.

He pulled her into his tight embrace, and to his surprise, she hugged back. The real touch of her skin and fabric, the real sight of light balancing off of her cheek. The real smell of her perfume. As he would soon find out, the real taste of her lips. And when she spoke—oh god, the real sound of her nymph-like voice.

It was real—it wasn't a dream.

Two souls intertwined—except, there was only one.


End file.
